Posted by 
Batsmen always want to play at the top of the order. This might be because they realise that you get more recognition up there. Well we’d like to recognise Ian Bell’s middle-order skills.
Runs equal plaudits and while top-order batsmen face the new ball, they can also approach batting however they want.
If Alastair Cook makes a decent score, he will do so at a steady rate of three runs an over. Maybe he’ll score at 2.8 runs an over if things are tough. After he passes 150, he might open his shoulders and score at 3.2 runs an over, but probably not. He does what he does and he does it astonishingly well.
Ian Bell isn’t allowed to play like that though. Before Cook goes out to bat, Graham Gooch sidles up to him, twirls his moustache and says: “Score at exactly three runs an over, Alastair. No more. No less.”
Before Bell goes out, Gooch could say a number of things.
- “Kick ‘em when they’re down, Ian.”
- “Pick up the pace a bit, Ian – compensate for Alastair.”
- “Save us, Ian. It’s all gone to shit.”
- “Have you had a slice of my mild cheddar? The block looks slightly smaller than it did this morning.”
The remarkable thing is that Bell has been delivering all that’s been asked of him. He’s not just playing well, like Cook. He’s playing well in about a million different ways.
always with the cheese, is Goochy. GET OVER IT.
I’m not sure Gooch currently has a moustache to twirl. Can someone provide evidence?
Whether he has one or not, a moustache is Graham Gooch’s defining feature.
Poor Graham. It’s not his 44 thousand (FOURTY FOUR THOUSAND!) first class runs, nor being England’s leading test run scorer of all time that defines the man. No, it is his moustache. Which he shaved off in about 1998.
That said, it was a bloody belter of a ‘tache.
A bloody belter. Too right.
http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00040/gooch_40254s.jpg
Gooch’s moustache was very much like Darren Gough’s bowling, I’ve always thought. Excellent in it’s own right certainly, but somewhat overshadowed by what the Australians had at the time.
In those days, you might have mistaken Gooch for an Edwardian gentleman cricketer…
…until he spoke…
Where did all that indifference to Ian Bell go, KC?
Not that I’m bothered – just asking.
He eroded it by playing so well, the swine.
Who do we have to be indifferent about now
Pretty much everyone else in the entire world.
Kevin Pietersen?
Indifference towards KP might or might not be OK.